ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 A rare earthquake with its epicenter off the coast of Cuba was felt more than 400 miles away in Central Florida.<\/p>\n
Monday\u2019s 6.1 magnitude earthquake happened in area that typically does not receive many earthquakes.<\/p>\n
In fact, this appears to be the strongest quake ever recorded in the Gulf.<\/p>\n
Strongest Gulf Earthquakes<\/p>\n
Typically, the most active and intense seismic activity in the region occurs further east towards Southeast Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n
The North American Plate drifts west as the Caribbean Plate moves east creating a strike-slip fault just south of the Great Antilles<\/p>\n
This is where the North American Plate and the Caribbean Plate slide against one another.<\/p>\n
The North American Plate drifts westward while the Caribbean Plate moves east.<\/p>\n
This creates a type of fault known as a transform or strike-slip fault.<\/p>\n
Strike-slip fault<\/p>\n
This is when two landmasses drift in opposite directions. The two sides of the fault catch on each other\u2019s rough edges and lock up.<\/p>\n
Even though the edges are stuck, the the landmass keeps moving. Eventually the the two sides break free and \u2018slip\u2019 generating the earthquake.<\/p>\n
Monday\u2019s earthquake did not occur on the fault line itself making it a rare event for the part of the world it happened in. <\/p>\n
How was it felt in Florida?<\/p>\n
The earthquake occurred approximately 16 miles beneath the earth\u2019s surface making this a shallow quake. Because the waves generated by the earthquake were relatively close to the surface they were able to travel with little resistance allowing it to be felt hundreds of miles away.<\/p>\n
The other main reason was the proximity of the quake to the Sunshine State and the journey the waves had to go on. <\/p>\n
Bigger quakes that occur on the main fault line are naturally further away by distance. <\/p>\n
Additionally, the waves of the quake have to travel through more heavily fractured terrain of the Caribbean helping to absorb some of the shockwave before it ever gets to Florida.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 A rare earthquake with its epicenter off the coast of Cuba was felt more than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[126263,48959,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-300633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-cuba-earthquake","tag-earthquake","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}